Thesis Outline

My thesis contributes to management education through an empirical examination of a UK Master of Business Administration (MBA) programme designed to cultivate specific dispositions and capabilities associated with phronesis. Moving beyond the short-term evaluations that characterise existing research, this doctoral study examined the medium-term traction of participants’ phronetic development. Specifically, it evaluated the extent to which the MBA fostered phronetic development following the programme, identified which pedagogical interventions supported this development over time, and derived recommendations for management educators seeking to cultivate practical wisdom within MBA programmes.

The findings demonstrated significant traction in participants’ reflexive capability, disposition, dialogical and reasoning capability, while revealing comparatively weaker and less enduring development in the capabilities of reflectivity and imagination. Participants who demonstrated the strongest levels of traction were typically those who continued to sustain reflective–reflexive practices within their everyday professional lives. In response to the findings, the study proposes a pedagogical framework for cultivating practical wisdom in MBA education centred on breakdown, care, and encounter. The study calls on management educators to reposition managerial learning as an embodied, relational, and practice-based process concerned with cultivating sound judgement, reflectivity, and reflexivity.